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Excerpt from Science and the City by Laurie Winkless, 2016:

“For now, let’s assume we have perfect wind conditions, and a tall wind turbine; we’re now part of the way there. We still need to capture the wind and then convert its energy into electrical energy. For the first step, we have to consider the shape of the blades. If you were to cut through a wind turbine’s blade, you’d see that it has a similar shape to both a bird’s wing and that of an aeroplane. That’s not a coincidence. This shape is called an aerofoil because it can slice through air very efficiently.

“The rounded section of the blade leads the way and breaks the airflow into two. The air that moves across the flattened bottom part can flow relatively freely, but the air that moves over the top of the blade has a slightly longer path to take. This difference in airspeed produces pockets of different air pressures above and below each of the turbine’s three blades. The low pressure on top ‘sucks’ at the blade, while the high pressure on the bottom pushes it, and the result is a spinning wind turbine. The rotation of the blades spins the loop of wire in the generator, meaning that the alternating current produced by wind turbines can be fed directly into the grid.”